Sharing Economy
Ada Langenfeld
Various Definitions
• “A system of direct exchange of goods and services among individuals without an intermediary directly facilitating every transaction” (1)
• “People coordinating in acquisition and distribution of a resource for a fee or compensation” (2)
• “Central in the sharing economy is the sharing and selling of goods, services, space and money, usually on an online platform.” (3)
• “Making use of market intelligence to create a more collaborative and sustainable society” (4)
Outline
1. Introduction
• Definition of the Sharing Economy
• Close relatives of the Sharing Economy
2. Some sectors of the Sharing Economy
• Transportation
• Accommodation
• Sharing between customers
• Sharing between businesses
3. Governmental adoption of Sharing Economy 4. Conclusion
5. References
Most concise definition
“Consumers granting each other temporary access to underutilized physical assets with idle capacity, possibly for money” (5)
• Consumer-to-consumer interaction (vs. Business-to-Consumer)
• Temporary access (ownership remains unchanged)
• Physical goods (as opposed to skills or time)
Close relatives of the Sharing Economy
• On-Demand Economy
➢Supply follows customer demand immediately
➢No supply if there is no demand
➢Example: Uber
• Second-Hand Economy
➢Customers sell used items to each other
➢Example: Ebay
• Product/Service Economy
➢Traditional renting/leasing by customers from businesses
➢Example: Hotel, Taxi, DVD rental
Examples
On-Demand Economy Sharing Economy Product/Service
Economy Second-Hand Economy
Importance of ICT to the Sharing Economy
• ICT = Information and Communication Technologies
• Digital platforms enable mass adoptions of products and services through the sharing economy (6)
• ICT enables connections between individuals to efficiently fulfill their needs
Some sectors of the Sharing Economy
• Transportation
• Accommodation
• Sharing between consumers
• Sharing between businesses
Transportation
• In 2018, 37.8% of Swiss energy use was in the transport sector (7)
→ Transportation is rather expensive energy-wise
• Car Sharing
• Most common form of transportation sharing
• True sharing: trip would have taken place anyway, but now there are more passengers
• On-demand economy: often also considered to be “sharing”
• Bike Sharing
• Often not differentiated from public bike rental
• Has become more popular in recent years
Car Sharing in the US -- Setup
• Research by Chen and Kockelman (8) on the life-cycle impacts of car sharing on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (2015)
• Consider vehicle manufacture, fuel production, travel distances, fuel economy, parking demands and impact on user behavior
• Candidate households for carsharing: urban areas with high population density → 3-26% of US population
• Previous studies estimate market potential for car sharing at 10% of adults over 21
Car Sharing in the US -- Effects
• Vehicle ownership impact: 1 shared car replaces 9 -13 privately owned cars
• Vehicle-kilometers travelled usually decrease 30-70%, especially if cost of usage is visible by the minute
• Shared cars need to be replaced more frequently (every 2-3 years instead of 6-7 years)
→ but therefore shared cars will also on average be newer and more fuel efficient than private cars
Car Sharing in the US -- Conclusion
• Most important contributor to carsharing’s lowered impacts is avoided travel and travel shifted to non-car modes (8)
• Avoided travel probably due to need to plan ahead (making reservations) and immediate cost awareness
• Vehicle manufacture and maintenance has a comparably small impact on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions
Bike Sharing -- Setup
• Study about impact of bike share programs on motor vehicle use (12)
• Analyzed Melbourne, Brisbane, Washington D.C., London, Minneapolis/St.Paul
• Survey among users to establish which mode of transportation was substituted by the bike sharing program
Bike Sharing -- Results
• Reduction of 90000 vehicle-km/year in Minneapolis/St.Paul and Melbourne
• Reduction of 243000 vehicle-km/year in Washington D.C.
• But: 766000 km/year increase in motor vehicle use in London!
➢ Mostly public transport substituted by bike use
➢ Substantial truck use for rebalancing of bike distribution (12)
Accommodation as Sharing Economy
Positive Effects
• Existing infrastructure reused
→ land use efficiency
• Generally lower energy
consumption than traditional hotels
Potential Rebound Effects
• Lower cost compared to hotels leads to savings which can lead to increased consumption
• Cheap accommodation
encourages additional travel
• Larger share of market is served
→
Airbnb accommodation
• Airbnb self-reports 63-78% reduction in energy consumption and 61- 89% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per guest night compared to hotels (9)
• No access to underlying numbers or methodology due to concern about privacy and trade secrets
Sharing assets between consumers (1)
• ICT and digital platforms are central to sharing items
➢Encourage trust between strangers based on review and rating systems (10)
➢Provide matching service/coordination between people
• Swiss example: sharely.ch
➢Lending and sharing platform for rarely used items
➢Frequent items: machinery, electronics
➢But also clothes, art, plants, boats…
Sharing assets between consumers (2)
Positive Effects
• Increased utilization of durable assets (11)
• Less resource consumption for production of items
Potential Rebound effects
• Shared goods need to be transported
• Savings in this area might lead to increased consumption
elsewhere
Sharing between businesses
• Business-to-Business (B2B) sector is growing (6)
• Sharing spare resources to operate at maximum efficiency:
➢ Real estate, e.g. office space, warehouses, store fronts
➢ Trucking capacity
➢ Capital assets, e.g. one MRI machine for multiple hospitals
• Positive effects: less construction/production emissions
• Rebound Effects: money saved can be spent elsewhere
Governmental adoption of Sharing Economy
• Not strictly speaking Sharing Economy, since it is not Consumer-to- Consumer sharing, but it follows the same goal
• United Kingdom: promotes sharing in transportation, office space, accommodation and skills networks
• “Sharing Seoul”:
➢ Project to promote sharing of goods and services in many areas
➢ Co-working spaces, common rooms within housing blocks, bike sharing…
Conclusion
• Generally, sharing items leads to less items being produced and therefore fewer emissions during that phase
• Not enough empirical data, especially on the various rebound effects
• So far, transportation and accommodation seem to be the biggest sectors of the Sharing Economy, with the biggest reductions in
emissions
References -- 1
(1) Nancy Koehn, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/08/the-big-share/
(2) Le, B. D. (2015). Challenges in entering Vietnamese market for companies in the sharing economy:75
(3) Verboven, Hans, and Lise Vanherck. "The sustainability paradox of the sharing economy." uwf UmweltWirtschaftsForum 24.4 (2016): 303-314.
(4) Heinrichs, Harald. "Sharing economy: a potential new pathway to
sustainability." GAIA-Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 22.4 (2013):
228-231.
(5) Frenken, Koen, and Juliet Schor. "Putting the sharing economy into
perspective." A Research Agenda for Sustainable Consumption Governance. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019.
(6) Hasan, Raza, and Mehdi Birgach. "Critical success factors behind the
sustainability of the Sharing Economy." 2016 IEEE 14th International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications (SERA). IEEE, 2016.
References -- 2
(7) Schweizerische Gesamtenergiestatistik 2018,
https://www.bfe.admin.ch/bfe/en/home/supply/statistics-and-geodata/energy- statistics/overall-energy-statistics.html
(8) Chen, T. Donna, and Kara M. Kockelman. "Carsharing’s life-cycle impacts on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions." Transportation Research Part D: Transport and
Environment 47 (2016): 276-284.
(9) https://blog.atairbnb.com/environmental-impacts-of-home-sharing/
(10) Frenken, Koen. "Political economies and environmental futures for the sharing
economy." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 375.2095 (2017): 20160367.
(11) Schor, Juliet. "Debating the sharing economy." Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics 4.3 (2016): 7-22.
